


Lay Your Sleeping Head

by Terri Botta (Isilwath)



Category: Eroica Yori Ai o Komete | From Eroica with Love
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 17:38:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/726007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isilwath/pseuds/Terri%20Botta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian loses his innocence. So does Klaus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lay Your Sleeping Head

Lay Your Sleeping Head  
            By Terri Botta © 2010  
  
Disclaimer: I don’t own Eroica. Sole copyright belongs to Aoike Yasuko. I’m poor so don’t sue.  
  
Rating: M.  
  
Pairing: Klaus/Dorian  
  
Summary: Dorian loses his innocence. So does Klaus.  
  
Lay Your Sleeping Head

A/N: The title for this fic comes from the poem, “Lay Your Sleeping Head My Love” by W.H. Auden.  
\----  
  
Klaus had no time to consider his predicament, nor to wonder how things had gotten so fucked up so fast. Half blind from the crap his enemy had thrown into his eyes, jaw throbbing from the punch it had received, one arm handcuffed to the desk he’d been rifling through, he knew his situation was desperate, and he was speeding through options as fast as he could think.  
  
Gun? Knocked out of his hand when the bastard blinded him, location unknown, stupid rookie mistake. Other weapons? A stapler on the desk that could be used if he could see enough to aim. Knife in a hidden sheath on his leg? Ditto. Chances of survival? Dwindling.  
  
He heard his nameless assailant laugh, and he looked up, focusing through the haze of stinging tears enough to realize that his enemy was threatening him with his own gun.  
  
“I hope you know to fire that thing,” he taunted through bloody lips.  
  
His enemy laughed again, bitingly, and raised the Magnum to aim. “Of course. I can even fire it one-handed.”  
  
He bared his teeth in defiance, even if he inwardly wondered if this was the end of Iron Klaus – shot by his own gun in some shit office in Budapest – and waited for the impact.  
  
It never came. Instead, his assailant suddenly went stiff, his eyes opening wide in silent shock. Then the Magnum fell from his fingers as his body slumped to the side, crumpling like a marionette whose strings had been cut. The action revealed the Earl of Gloria standing behind the man, a bloody knife held firmly in his right hand.  
  
There was silence as he stared at the blond thief, who in turn looked back at him with a shocked expression on his face. Klaus knew that look all too well. He’d seen it on the faces of countless new agents right after they’d made their first kill, but he never thought he’d ever see it on the Earl of Gloria.  
 _  
‘Lord Gloria…’  
_  
Eroica said nothing. Instead he turned to the body, kneeling down on one knee and placing two fingers on the man’s neck to check for a pulse, but Klaus already knew the brute was dead. A moment later, he watched the thief’s eyes go blank, and his mouth harden into a thin line, as he wiped the bloody blade on the dead man’s shirt, then he sequestered the dagger back into whatever secret sheath he had hidden in his clothes.  
  
Still not speaking, the Earl moved swiftly over to him, flitching a lock pick from the mane of his curls, and deftly unlocked the handcuff around his wrist. When it was free, Klaus rubbed it to bring back the circulation.  
  
“Are you alright?” the Earl asked him in a low voice.  
  
“Ja, but the asshole threw something in my eyes.”  
  
“I passed a bathroom down the hall.”  
  
Klaus nodded, stepping from behind the desk to pick up his gun from where it had fallen and giving it a quick feel. The bastard had taken off the safety; he’d been seconds away from firing.  
  
“Did you get what you needed?” Lord Gloria questioned.  
  
“Nein, I was interrupted.”  
  
Eroica made a soft sound of agreement and maneuvered around him to go behind the desk. “What am I looking for?”  
  
“A flash drive with information on terrorist sleeper cells in Eastern Europe..”  
  
The other man gave a nod and went to work. In less than fifteen seconds he’d pried open a hidden compartment in the desk that Klaus hadn’t even known was there, and he had a flash drive in his hand.  
  
“I hope this is it,” Eroica said, handing him the drive without comment or fanfare. It sent warning alarms screaming in his head.  
  
“Good work,” he praised.  
  
“I’m a pro.”  
  
He grunted in agreement, plugging the drive into the office’s desktop computer and examining it to confirm it was the one he needed.  
  
“Ja, and first rate.”  
  
It took longer than normal to check the drive because he had to make his stinging eyes focus. He noticed that the Earl hovered near him protectively, one hand ready to reach for a weapon should they be interrupted, and he briefly marveled at the role reversal. Usually it was he who was protecting the thief while the blond worked his sticky-finger magic, and the irony that, if he’d called Eroica for help in the first place, none of the debacle of tonight would have happened was not lost on him. He would not have been attacked and blinded, he would not have almost been shot with his own gun… and the Earl would not have had to kill a man to save him.  
  
He glanced at the thief. So far, he seemed to be okay, but there was no telling what would happen once they were out of there.  
  
“This is it,” he announced, unplugging the drive and shoving it into his pocket.  
  
“Good. Let’s go,” Eroica answered, his voice tense and strained.  
  
They left the office quickly, Klaus noting that Eroica would not look at the body that was still bleeding out on the drab carpet, and entered the hall. The bright lights from the fluorescent lamps blinded him all over again as his eyes watered and stung. He didn’t even have to say a word before a firm hand closed around his forearm, and he was efficiently guided to the aforementioned bathroom where he hurried to flush his eyes while Eroica stood guard.  
  
“Better?” the thief asked as Klaus wiped his face dry with a paper towel.  
  
“Enough,” he replied, his eyes focusing on a smear of blood on the thief’s right hand. The shock of scarlet stood out like a fresh scar, and he suppressed a shiver at the sight of it on the Earl’s unmarred flesh.  
  
The Earl noticed his attention and paled when he saw the red streak on his white skin. He stepped up to the sink and furiously scrubbed the blood away. Klaus thought he looked a little green, but he was proud at how well the other man was keeping it together, all things considered.  
  
“Do you have a car?” Eroica asked, drying his hands quickly.  
  
“Nein.”  
  
“We’ll take mine then.”  
  
“You’ll have to drive.” His eyes were better, but not enough to navigate a car, and one near-death experience was enough for him in one day.  
  
“No problem. Anywhere we need to stop before we get out of this horrid place?”  
  
He thought briefly of the overnight bag he had left in the cheap hotel room he’d rented, but there was nothing in it that couldn’t be replaced.  
  
“Nein.”  
  
“Let’s go then. There’s a stairwell at the end of this hallway that leads down into the carpark.”  
  
“What about the other guards?” he questioned as they headed down the corridor.  
  
“Asleep. One of Bonham’s soporifics. They’ll be out for another ten minutes. I would have used one back there in the office but…” Klaus heard the Earl’s voice break slightly. “but I didn’t think there was time.”  
  
“There wasn’t. He was about to shoot.”  
  
The Earl nodded once, then fell silent. They hurried down the stairs to the underground garage, and Eroica guided him to a plain, non-descript sedan that was the complete antithesis of the vehicles the fop usually drove.  
  
“What? No Lamborghini?” he joked weakly as he slid into the passenger seat.  
  
“Too flashy, and as Mr. James loves to point out, this gets much better mileage,” his companion replied, throwing the car into gear and spinning tires as they sped out of the carpark.  
  
“Where is the Stingy Bug anyway?” he asked, attempting to lighten the dark, serious look on the Earl’s face.  
  
The somber expression was doing more to unsettle him than the situation they were in. The thief should be bubbling, yammering foppish nonsense and making a pass, not gripping the steering wheel in a vice grip and glaring at traffic as if it were another enemy.  
  
“I left him in Prague. He has a nasty habit of stealing whatever it is I have and trying to sell it to the highest bidder whenever you’re involved.”  
  
“I noticed and I appreciate your efforts.”  
  
“I don’t mess around anymore, Major. In the digital age, seconds count, and there is no time to waste. When we’re safe, I’ll call my team and tell them to meet me in Bonn.”  
  
“Good thinking.”  
  
“I do my best. Where to?”  
  
“Linz. We can stay there overnight and head for Bonn in the morning,” he replied.  
  
The Earl gave an assent and headed for the M1/E60 highway that would take them out of Hungary and into Austria. It was a 400km trip, so he took the time to rest and think about what had happened.  
  
“You followed me,” he stated flatly.  
  
“I always follow you. It’s become my profession more than thieving,” the Earl snapped back, sounding a bit peeved. “ ** _Especially_** when you go into a mission without any back-up.”  
  
 “It was just supposed to be a simple reconnaissance mission! I stumbled onto the terrorist cell by accident!” he shouted, defending himself.  
   
“It’s a good thing I was there then,” the thief replied in clipped tones.  
  
The statement was loaded, and he did not know what to say. “Ja.”  
  
Eroica fell silent, driving, and he closed his eyes because the headlights from the on-coming cars were giving him a headache. He must have dozed off at one point because the next thing he knew they were east of Vienna on the A1, and he realized that the Earl hadn’t spoken in over three hours. That did not bode well. Now that Budapest was behind them, he knew from experience that Eroica’s mind was whirring as the adrenaline high wore off, and the fact that he was now a killer was starting to sink in.  
  
Peering sideways at Eroica’s face, he noticed that it was drawn and his eyes were haunted. It was not a look Klaus associated with the normally exuberant fop, nor was his uncharacteristic silence. It confirmed his suspicions that the thief had never killed before, and knowing that he was the cause of the Earl’s loss of innocence was a cold lump in his stomach.  
  
Once they were in Linz, he directed the Earl to pull into the parking lot of a decent looking hotel. He could feel the thief’s tenuous hold on his emotions beginning to slip, and he wanted them to be off the road before the full effect hit. They got out of the car once they were parked, and Klaus was surprised when Eroica pulled two bags out of the trunk and handed him one.  
  
“What is this?” he asked, looking curiously at the nondescript gym bag.  
  
“Since that time in Cairo, I always carry a bag with clothes for you, Major. Don’t worry it’s nothing you’ll object to. Sweat clothes and jeans, all drab and boring.”  
  
Klaus knew the man was referring to a mission in Egypt four years ago where both of them had ended up drenched in tainted water from an illegal pollution racket they caught dumping raw sewage into the Nile. He’d been mortified to have to wear something of the Earl’s until he could get back to his own things, but at the time anything had been better than reeking of shit.  
  
He grunted a thanks and followed the blond into the hotel lobby. He was sweeping his eyes around the room to look for potential threats, when he heard the Earl ask for two rooms from the harried-looking desk clerk.  
  
“One room is fine,” he interrupted. “As long as it has two beds.”  
  
The Earl gave him a surprised look, but acquiesced, and for that Klaus was glad because he didn’t think he should leave Eroica alone, but he hadn’t wanted to explain why. A few moments later, the clerk gave them each a key, and they headed up to their room.  
  
“How are your eyes?” the Earl asked him when they were in the elevator.  
  
“Better. Still sting a bit, but they’re all right.”  
  
“Good. I’m glad.”  
  
The room was plain with two narrow beds and a simple bath and shower, but it was all they needed for the night.  
  
“You can take the first shower,” the Earl told him. “I’m going to be a while, and I know how much you hate to wait.”  
  
“Danke,” he replied and took the gym bag into the bathroom. He was not surprised to find that the thief had included all of his usual brands of toiletries in addition to a set of heather gray sweat clothes, a pair of plain blue jeans, and a dusky green sweater all in his size. There were undershorts, too, but no undershirts.  
  
 _‘Fop probably left them out on purpose, but he knew I’d never stand to go without underwear.’_  
  
Digging down to the bottom of the bag, his hand touched something soft and silky, and he pulled out a set of steel gray silk pajamas that if the Earl hadn’t saved his life today, he would have stormed out of the bathroom to strangle him. As it was, he fumed as he stripped off his clothes and took a quick shower, making sure to put his face under the spray to flush out his eyes again. When he was finished, he towel-dried his hair and dressed in the sweat clothes since he was certainly not going to put on those damn silk pajamas.  
  
He found Eroica huddled on one of the beds when he emerged from the bathroom, his back against the wall and his head buried on his knees. He was such a picture of forlorn dejection that Klaus’s anger died in his throat, and he frowned.  
  
“I’m finished,” he announced, watching carefully as the Earl raised his head and looked at him. If the man was wondering why Klaus was in the sweat suit and not the pajamas, he didn’t ask, and Klaus didn’t offer.  
  
“Ok. Thanks,” the thief replied, getting up, gathering a bundle of multi-colored clothes, and disappearing into the bathroom.  
  
While the Earl of Gloria was bathing, Klaus rang for room service and ordered a light meal of vegetable soup, bread, cheese, and salad for the Earl, and beef soup with bacon dumplings and fried potatoes for himself. He also ordered a piece of linzer torte because he knew Eroica had a sweet tooth, a bottle of white wine, and some good, dark beer. The food was delivered before the Earl was out of the bathroom, so Klaus paid for the meal and tipped the waiter.  
  
He waited another fifteen minutes before he went over to the closed bathroom door. He could hear that the shower had been turned off, but the water in the sink was running, and he could hear little whimpering noises that sounded suspicious. Clenching his jaw, and hoping the Earl was decent, he yanked open the unlocked door and was hit with a face-full of steam. When the moist fog cleared, however, he was able to see Eroica standing in front of the vanity, hips wrapped in a towel, long blond hair heavy from washing. He was scrubbing his hands in the sink and from the look of it, he’d been doing it a while.  
  
“Lord Gloria,” he said gently.  
  
“I got some blood under my nails, Major, and it won’t come off,” Eroica explained, his voice just on the sane side of hysteria.  
  
Steeling himself, he stepped into the bathroom and clasped his hand around the thief’s right wrist, lifting the hand up to where he could inspect it. It was raw from scrubbing, but it didn’t look too bad.  
  
“It’s clean,” he assured the other man.  
   
The Earl yanked his wrist out of the Major’s grip and looked at it himself, shaking his head. “No, I can still see it there. It won’t come off.”  
  
He turned to scrub his hand again, but Klaus stopped him. “Lord Gloria… Dorian, it’s clean. Now get dressed and come out of the bathroom.”  
  
The Earl stared at him, and he wasn’t sure if it was because he’d been willing to touch him while he was half naked or because he’d used the man’s given name.  
  
“It doesn’t get any better, does it?” Eroica asked suddenly.  
  
“No,” he answered with complete seriousness. “Taking another man’s life… No, it never gets any better.”  
  
“I’m a murderer.”  
  
“If you hadn’t killed him, I’d be dead. You too, probably, because he would have shot you as soon as he killed me.”  
  
All the color drained from Eroica’s already pale face as realization set in. “Oh,” he gasped, his eyes going wide. **“ _Oh!_ ”**  
  
The thief started shaking, and Klaus guided him to sit down on the toilet seat before he fell. He’d been expecting this so it came as no surprise. He put one hand on the Earl’s shoulder and pushed him to put his head between his knees.  
  
“Take deep breaths and get a hold of yourself,” he ordered, but he kept his voice gentle.  
  
The bare flesh shivered under his touch as the thief continued to tremble, but he had seen this before so he remained calm. He reached over and picked up a handful of multi-colored fabric from a pile on the floor. It turned out to be one of those loose, floppy shirts the Earl favored with ties up the front.  
  
“Here. Put this on. Get dressed,” he commanded, taking the other man’s hands and sliding them into the wide sleeves. Then he pulled the shirt over Eroica’s head and yanked it over the still quivering back.  
  
“Oh. Oh. Oh,” the Earl continued to say.  
  
Klaus shoved a pair of briefs and a set of turquoise leggings at him. “Put your pants on. I ordered food. It is here and getting cold. Do not make me wait for you.”  
  
The Earl stared at the clothes as if he had just been given a woman’s bra. “Food? I cannot even think of eating. I’ll vomit.”  
  
“You must eat. You are going into shock. I ordered a bland meal for you. Pull yourself together. You are stronger than this.”  
  
The slight admonishment made the Earl tense, and he looked into blazing blue eyes as Eroica lifted his head. He saw the other man set his jaw, and he recognized the fierce expression on the thief’s face. He nodded once in acknowledgement and left the man to finish dressing. He had no doubt that the Earl would do exactly as he had ordered, and sure enough five minutes later the thief emerged from the bathroom fully clothed.  
  
Klaus stood by the table and waited for Eroica to join him. The food had already been distributed, and he took his place as the Earl sat down opposite him. Lifting off the lids that had been keeping the food warm, he began eating his soup and potatoes, one eye on the thief who was nibbling half-heartedly at a bit of cheese. He thought about ordering the man to eat his soup, but decided against it. He’d learned from experience that Eroica would only take orders for so long before he rebelled. Giving the man a command right now would only earn him a face full of hot liquid, so he opted for a gentler approach instead.  
  
“This soup is good. You should try yours,” he commented mildly, taking another spoonful of his own meal. It really was very tasty, but then he’d always liked the Tirol recipe.  
  
The Earl cast him a baleful look, but lifted his soupspoon and shoved a mouthful of his vegetable soup into his mouth. Klaus watched him swallow.  
  
“It’s not bad,” the thief conceded.  
  
He grunted in approval and kept eating, alternately taking sips from his beer. The wine he had poured for the Earl was so far left untouched, but Eroica ate a few bites more of soup and bread. He was concerned, but not entirely surprised, when the other man suddenly gagged and dashed for the bathroom. He followed quickly and entered the room just in time to hold back the thief’s long hair as he retched into the toilet.  
  
He said nothing, but he did rub the man between his shoulders in a gesture of comfort, and the thin back heaved under his hand as Eroica purged everything he’d just eaten plus whatever had already been in his stomach. The Earl’s harsh breathing filled the small room, part gasp, part sob, and Klaus was at a loss to do anything but wait it out.  
  
“I suppose my reaction disgusts you,” Eroica finally rasped when he stopped vomiting.  
  
He grunted and stroked the soft curls gently, digging his fingertips into the back of the Earl’s skull and rubbing the scalp in small circles. He knew the motion felt good on his own head and guessed the Earl would like it too.  
  
“My third mission,” he began haltingly. “I was young, stupid, and had something to prove. I was ambushed by a KBG agent, fired my gun and got the guy in the neck. He bled out all over me, gurgling and thrashing. When it was all over, I stared at the body, then puked all over the sidewalk.”  
  
Eroica was silent for a while, then he asked, “How old were you?”  
  
“Twenty-two, and if you ever tell anyone, I **_will_** kill you,” he threatened firmly.  
  
“Your secret is safe with me, Major,” the man promised, but he could hear the smile in the voice.  
  
He huffed an approval and twisted the hair in his hand, but not hard enough to pull. “You done?”  
  
The Earl spit into the commode one more time, then nodded as he rose shakily to his feet. Klaus took him by the arm and steadied him until he got his balance. Once he was relatively certain the thief wasn’t going to puke again, he released him and grabbed for Eroica’s toothbrush, or what he assumed was the man’s toothbrush because it wasn’t his, smearing a bit of mint toothpaste on the bristles.  
  
“Here. Brush your teeth,” he ordered, shoving the item at the thief.  
  
The Earl took the offered toothbrush and thoroughly scrubbed his teeth and gums under Klaus’s supervision.  
  
“Gut. Be sure to get your tongue and the inside of your cheeks,” he stated.  
  
Eroica grinned at him with foamy lips, then spit into the sink and rinsed. “You’re so sexy when you’re bossy,” the thief cooed, tongue flicking out to lick his bottom lip.  
  
Klaus snorted. He knew that the Earl was falling back on his foppish persona in order to deal with the situation, but in a way, he was relieved because the mannerisms were what passed as normal for them.  
  
“If you’re flirting, you’re alright.”  
  
The thief pressed up against him, face flushed and eyes dilated, and Klaus steeled himself not to move. If he called the Earl on his behavior, it might send him back to the toilet, and he’d rather have a flirting thief than a puking one.  
  
“Do you think so? How can you be certain? Don’t you want to check my temperature to make sure I’m not feverish?” Eroica purred, laying his hands flat on Klaus’s chest, his neck arched and mouth close enough for him to smell the mint on the other man’s breath.  
  
He didn’t want to shove the Earl away when he was in such a fragile state so he opted for taking him by the arms. Unfortunately, Eroica took that as an encouraging sign and moved closer.  
  
“We both almost died today, Major. Don’t you want to reaffirm that you are alive?”  
  
He pulled his lips back to growl at the thief only to find them covered by the Earl’s own as he was kissed. It happened so suddenly that it took him by surprise, and he felt Dorian’s hands fisting into his sweatshirt like Velcro to keep himself from being pushed away.  
  
“How do I feel to you, Major?” Eroica asked breathlessly when he pulled back.  
  
“You feel suicidal,” he replied, gripping the Earl’s forearms firmly. “Why must you do things you know will upset me? You saved my life today, I have no desire to be angry with you.”  
  
“But I’m not suicidal, Major,” the other man insisted. “And I don’t mean to make you angry. I just want you to love me! I killed for you, Major. Who else would kill for you?”  
  
He wanted to say that any one of his agents would kill for him, but he knew that was not what the Earl meant. The Alphabets would kill in the line of duty, because it would be expected of them, but none of them would kill because they claimed to love him.  
  
“Who else would plunge a knife into your enemy’s heart?” the thief whispered, his lips a hair’s breadth from Klaus’s own.  
  
The fists gripping his sweatshirt tightened, and he braced for another kiss as Eroica pulled him closer and covered his mouth again. In the middle of the kiss, he felt the man start to quiver, and he heard the Earl draw a harsh breath. Tears were staining the thief’s face when he broke away, shuddering and gulping huge gasps of air.  
  
“Oh! Oh,” the blond gasped.  
  
Klaus cut him off before he could work himself up into another attack of nausea, and he lifted one hand to thread into the Earl’s soft curls, pressing the man’s face to his shoulder, and wrapped the other around the slender body.  
  
“You’re alright. You’re going to be alright,” he assured him, pulling him close because he needed to feel the Earl as much as the Earl needed to be felt. He didn’t want to think too closely about that, but maybe there was some truth to the whole affirmation of life thing.  
  
“No. It won’t be. You said it never gets any better,” Eroica countered, voice muffled against Klaus’s shoulder.  
  
“Nein, but you learn to live with it.”  
  
“How? How do you live with it?” the thief asked, clinging to Klaus’s sweatshirt.  
  
“By knowing that if I hadn’t killed, many innocent people would have died,” he admitted, speaking into the shell of the Earl’s ear.  
  
“If I hadn’t killed, the man I love would have died. I knew that! I knew it! I saw him, and he had your gun, and I just knew he was going to use it! So I took my dagger and I… and I stabbed it right into him! I didn’t even think about it. I just knew I had to save you. I had to!”  
  
The Earl lifted his head and looked at him with eyes that begged him to understand. He met those eyes and nodded.  
  
“Ja, I know,” he admitted, dropping his arms.  
  
“You… you don’t think less of me, then?” the Earl asked in a small voice, teeth pressing down on his bottom lip in worry.  
  
He blinked. “How could I? If you hadn’t stabbed him, my brains would be splattered all over the wall of that crap office, so I wouldn’t have been able to think anything of you.”  
  
Eroica laughed and moved close again, worry giving way to relief. “That’s one of the things I love about you, Major. You’re so blunt and down to business.”  
  
He could see that the Earl was going to kiss him a third time, and he allowed it for reasons he really didn’t want to examine. He even moved his lips against the thief’s in a return kiss. For another guy, the man wasn’t half bad, and he was certainly better than most of the women he’d kissed before. The thief’s mouth tasted sweet, not at all unpleasant, and it lacked the artificial flavors of cosmetics and lip balm. The Earl also smelled natural, like how he was supposed to smell without cologne or aftershave, and he wondered how long he’d been recognizing the other man by scent.  
  
When Eroica pulled back, his eyes were gleaming and he giggled. The sound made Klaus clench his teeth because he hated when the Earl acted like an idiot queer, and he almost snarled at the man when he ran one finger across Klaus’s clavicle.  
  
“I know this is all new to you, Major, and I certainly don’t want to do anything that would scare you away since we seem to be getting along so swimmingly tonight,” the blond said demurely, batting his big, blue eyes. “We should agree on a code word that you can use to tell me to stop. If you say it, I’ll cease whatever it is I’m doing immediately and back off. What do you say to that? Would that make you more… comfortable?”  
  
Since he fully expected the thief to get shitfaced drunk and pass out, he saw no reason not to humor him. “Okay, fine. NATO. I’ll say NATO, but you have to eat first.”  
  
“NATO, hm? How original, Major, but at least I know you won’t forget it,” Eroica answered, snickering and seemingly amused by his own joke.  
  
“Whatever. Just get back to the table and eat.”  
  
“Yes, Sir, NATO man, Sir.”  
  
The Earl groped his butt as he swept past him to exit the bathroom, and Klaus had to stifle the urge to deck the man unconscious, opting instead to close his eyes and count to ten… then twenty, pinching the bridge of his nose because he was getting a headache. When he turned around to follow the thief, he found the Earl leaning seductively against the doorframe, his expression sultry and coy. He gave the other man a dour look.  
  
“That doesn’t work when a woman does it; it certainly won’t when you do,” he deadpanned.  
  
Eroica huffed and pushed off the frame, turning his back and swishing his hips as he sauntered to the table. Klaus just rolled his eyes and wondered how he got himself into these situations as he followed.  
  
They sat back down at the table, and the Earl nibbled at his food again. Klaus’s potatoes were cold, but he ate them anyway, washing them down with beer. When Eroica finished his soup, Klaus tapped the glass of wine.  
  
“You should drink this. It will help settle your stomach.”  
  
The blond leered and took a sip. “Are you trying to get me drunk, Major, so you can have your way with me?” he cooed.  
  
“Pah. You forget I’ve seen you drunk. You strip off all your clothes then pass out,” he replied with a snort.  
  
“Oh, that sounds interesting. Would you like me to strip off my clothes?” the thief asked leadingly, batting his eyelashes.  
  
He didn’t bother to grace that with an answer, merely stared the blond down with a bland look. After a moment, he saw Eroica’s coy expression falter and his mouth turned down into a frown.  
  
“That doesn’t do it for you either, huh?” the Earl commented with a pout, using his fork to stab a big piece of the linzer torte and putting it in his mouth, his teeth snapping testily.  
  
“Nein,” he admitted.  
  
“What **_does_** do it then?” the other man pressed, looking miserable.  
  
“Dunno,” he admitted, taking another swig of his beer and shoving a few more fried potatoes into his mouth.  
  
“You’re not… I mean… You can….” Eroica stammered, nervously tearing a piece of bread into tiny hunks.  
  
He rolled his eyes again. Trust the fop to think he was impotent. Idiot. “Everything works.”  
  
“Well then, what… do you do?”  
  
The look on the Earl’s face was earnestly curious, and he knew he had the blond’s complete attention. It was a rare thing because so often the thief filled his head with what he **_thought_** was real and not what was **_actually_** real.  
  
“When I have been… in the mood, I have gone out, found someone amicable and not too offensive, and gone back to her place. We have sex and I leave before morning,” he answered honestly.  
  
The thief blinked at him in surprise, and he scowled, taking another swig of his beer.  
  
“What? Did you think I was a virgin? Saving myself for marriage and all that crap? I am a normal, healthy, heterosexual man.”  
  
“I didn’t think you were a virgin, Major. I’m just surprised to find that you are so… casual about it. You don’t strike me as the type to go for a one-night stand.”  
  
He drank again and shrugged. “It’s not something I do often. Maybe a couple of times a year. Conditions have to be just right for it.”  
  
“So you just go out, find someone you like, and go home with them?” Lord Gloria asked curiously, eating another bite of the torte.  
  
“S’ about it. I usually pick someone I think I can stand for a few hours. It helps if they don’t talk too much, but good luck finding a woman who doesn’t want to yammer your ear off,” he replied, taking his own fork and snagging a piece of the torte for himself before Earl Sweet Tooth ate it all.  
  
“No repeat performances then? No one you’ve gone home with twice?” the Earl questioned, and he could see the thief hoping the answer was no. Well, he could oblige him then, because there weren’t.  
  
“Nein.”  
  
“You’ve never been in a relationship?”  
  
“Nein. Most women who showed interest in me were enemy agents,” he answered, wishing he’d ordered Nescafe. He could use a cup right about now to go with the last bit of the torte.  
  
“So you’ve never been in love?”  
  
Trust the hopeless fop to ask about love and **_feelings_**.  
  
“Don’t know if I believe in love. I’m not even sure it even exists,” he confessed.  
  
It felt good to be honest. Eroica was likely the only person on the planet he **_could_** be honest with because the Earl never judged him, or ever given him any reason to believe that he had to sugar-coat the truth.  
  
“What about me then? I love you. Do you think I don’t?”  
  
“I think you are a delusional idiot who thinks an obviously heterosexual man is secretly gay,” he replied, but there was no anger or insult in his voice.  
  
“From what you’ve just told me, I don’t think you’re anything. I think you’re a tank,” the Earl bemoaned with a frown.  
  
Klaus shrugged and drank more beer. If he couldn’t have Nescafe, he’d take the beer. “Tanks are nice. Nothing wrong with tanks. Tanks get the job done.”  
  
“Oh, I don’t doubt that. But tanks have no feelings and I know you do.”  
  
“Feelings, in my opinion, are over-rated,” he stated, finished his drink.  
  
The beer was good, the food was good, the danger was past, the Earl was calming down, and he could feel the tension from earlier in the day begin to let loose its hold on his body. Maybe it was a mistake, but he opened another beer. No German worth his salt would get drunk on just one beer.  
  
“But feelings are everything, Major. If we don’t feel what we do, everything is meaningless,” Eroica said earnestly.  
  
He shrugged. “So you say. You need to feel good about what you do. I have no such need.”  
  
That wasn’t entirely true, but he liked baiting the Earl, and it was fun to tease him about his romantic foolishness.  
  
“Now, I know that is a lie, Major. You need to feel like you are doing good in the world otherwise everything you suffer and risk is all for nothing,” Lord Gloria pointed-out astutely.  
  
He looked at the other man from over the top of the beer bottle, but said nothing.  
  
“And these women you choose to go home with… you must feel **_something_** for them, do you not?”  
  
It was a good thing he’d already swallowed, otherwise he would have spit beer when he laughed. “Now **_that_** , Lord Gloria, is definitely a falsehood.”  
  
“So you feel nothing for them? Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am? Good lord, Major, does it even take more than five minutes?” the thief asked, eyes wide. “What makes that any different from hiring a prostitute?”  
  
He could choose to be insulted by the crass remark, but he just smiled with a hint of cruelty. “Why pay for it when a smile and a few nice words can get me it for free?”  
  
The Earl groaned and put a hand to his forehead, but that just made Klaus smile wider.  
  
“What? Am I destroying your idiotic, romantic fantasies of me? Tarnishing your pristine picture of me that you have in your silly head?” he taunted lightly.  
  
“Far from it, my German wire rope. You’re just proving my point that women do nothing for you. You need a man to unlock that raging passion I know is in you.”  
  
He scoffed, a barking laugh, and shook his head. “You are hopeless, thief.”  
  
The Earl took a drink of his wine, lips smiling secretly. “Hopeful, my dear Major. Hopeful.”  
  
“You hope in vain.”  
  
“Hope is never in vain, Major,” Eroica argued.  
  
He rolled his eyes and knocked back the rest of his second beer. He was definitively feeling rather mellow now, a dangerous state of mind to be in around the Earl, but they **_had_** almost died today, and even if he no longer puked in the face of death, it didn’t mean he was completely unaffected. He wouldn’t get drunk, though. That would be incredibly stupid.  
  
“So…” the Earl began leadingly, pouring himself another glass of wine. “Getting back to these nameless females… Is there a… particular position you prefer?”  
  
Glittering blue eyes peered at him from over the wine glass, the thief’s lips caught on the edge as he sipped delicately. Klaus waved a lazy hand and answered casually.  
  
“From behind is okay,” he replied.  
  
Eroica’s eyebrows went up into his curls. “So you don’t necessarily want to be looking at them while you’re having sex with them.”  
  
The observation set off warning alarms, but he stamped down the rush of anger. He really didn’t want to have the night end with him hitting the man who had saved his life.  
  
“I don’t know, Dorian. When I’m like that, I just want to fuck. It doesn’t happen often and never when I’m on a mission,” he replied, deliberately using the Earl’s given name and the obscenity to push the other man’s buttons.  
  
Lord Gloria’s eyes lit up and he grinned, not taking Klaus’s bait or allowing himself to be thrown off the scent trail he was hunting, much to Klaus’s discomfort. How could he have forgotten that the silly fop was anything but stupid, and far, far too observant for Klaus’s current state of mind.  
  
“But I’ll bet it happens right **_after_** one,” the thief said with a hint of triumph in his voice. “Especially one that was difficult, one where you had to fight. You get back to Bonn, flush from your victory, and you want to claim your spoils of war. That’s when it happens, doesn’t it?”  
  
Klaus was silent. He couldn’t deny that the Earl was correct. His strongest urges for sex **_did_** come after a hard mission, and an uneasy feeling began to roll in his stomach. He thought about reaching for another beer, but decided against it. Any more and his mind might be impaired, and the thief was still sober. They were wading into deep waters, and he needed to keep his wits about him because Eroica was going on the attack.  
  
“I’m right, aren’t I? I’ll bet it happened right after that mission in Vienna with that horrid woman; the one where I ran out on to the bridge to Czechoslovakia to tackle that brute of a man so I could get that microfilm for you. I’ll bet you got back to Bonn, and you went out looking for someone to fuck,” the Earl pressed, rolling his pink tongue on the curse word and running his bare foot along Klaus’s leg seductively, tickling Klaus’s calf with his toes. “Tell me, Major, did the one you chose look like me?”  
  
He scowled, knocking the thief’s foot away and abruptly stood, almost upending the table as he did so. The Earl’s eyes gleamed like a lion that had just scented fresh meat.  
  
“She **_did_** look like me,” the other man breathed, smiling in exultation.  
  
He straightened his back and balled his fists at his sides. It was getting too close in the room, too near to the truth. The Earl had nailed it again in his blunt, too observant way. The woman he’d gone home with **_had_** been tall with curly blond hair and blue eyes, but he’d die before he admitted it. It was time to end the game before things got too dangerous.  
   
“NATO,” he snapped defensively, saying the “safe” word. “Let’s go to bed.”  
  
“Yes, let’s,” the other man agreed, and Klaus did not miss the anticpation in his voice.  
  
He turned his back on the Earl and moved to get into one of the narrow beds. He was half way into it when something hit him from behind, slamming him to the mattress face-first. His natural instincts took over, and he twisted to flip onto his back, only to find that his assailant was the thief. Eroica was straddling him, strong legs gripping his hips as both hands grabbed his wrists and pinned them above his head. The other man’s blue eyes were blazing, his face intense, and Klaus was shocked to feel a thrill of excitement run through his own body. Ever the astute scholar of all things Eberbach, the Earl didn’t miss the reaction and his thin lips turned up into a leer.  
  
“Oh yes, **_that_** does it for you. A show of strength, proof that I can make you do what I want,” Eroica all but crowed.  
  
“Bah! I can toss you off whenever I feel like it,” he sneered back, pushing against the surprisingly strong grip on his wrists. His pulse was racing, but he wasn’t afraid. No… he was anything but afraid.  
  
“I am sure you could, but I notice that you are not. You like it when someone else takes control. You hate it when I act foppish, as you call it, because it makes me look weak, like I can’t handle you. Oh, my dear Major, you have no idea what I can handle.”  
  
The Earl leaned over him, his face mere inches from his own, his long hair falling in a curtain around their heads, and breathed against his lips. Eroica’s scent wafted into his nose, and he shuddered, heat flushing through his limbs, the blood tingling in his veins, but he held himself still. Above him, the thief chuckled, low and secretly, and lowered his mouth to Klaus’s earlobe, tongue flicking out to lick the suddenly super-sensitized flesh. He repressed the shiver, but not quickly enough, and he heard the thief croon with delight.  
  
“Here is how we are going to do this, Major,” Eroica cooed sweetly, his voice full of promise and seduction. “I am going to continue to ravish you. If you say NATO, I will stop immediately. If you don’t, I will keep going no matter how much you protest. Deal?”  
  
He growled in answer, but he did not try to throw the other man off, nor could he deny the rush of arousal that surged through him. The Earl’s leer widened into a grin.  
  
“I’ll take that as a yes.”  
  
And so it began. Eroica released his wrists, but Klaus kept his arms above his head and stayed silent when the other man lightly ran fingers down his chest to the edge of the sweatshirt. Warm, sure hands slipped under the soft fabric to caress his bare skin, inching up the gray fleece until it was pushed over his head. Naked from the waist up, he laid there in the bed, waiting, breathing shallowly, as he watched the Earl take him in. The burning glow in the thief’s eyes faded and was replaced by a soft tenderness Klaus hadn’t seen before.  
  
“So beautiful…” the man whispered reverently, touching one of Klaus’s many scars with a fingertip.  
  
Lips followed shortly after, gentle kisses to each puckered ridge of flesh, and Klaus wasn’t imagining things when thought the Earl paid very close attention to the ones he had earned during the mission in Turkey when he’d almost died from a grenade blast. A warm tongue traced the scar that ran across his left breast, nicking the aureole underneath its ring of soft, dark hair, and lips closed around the nipple, sucking gently, and sending a jolt of electricity through his already stiff body. He couldn’t stifle the groan.  
  
Above him, thighs still pinning his hips to the bed, he heard the Earl sigh just before teeth gave the nipple a quick nip. He gasped, shuddering, and clenched his fingers into the covers on the bed, but the man wasn’t anywhere near done, and Klaus was soon convinced that the Earl intended to drive him insane.  
  
Everything the Earl did was slow, designed to inflame his senses and draw out the pleasure. But it wasn’t the actions the man committed that had Klaus’s head spinning; it was the adoration behind each touch, the **_feelings_** behind them. There was a reverence to the thief’s technique, an affection that flavored everything with deeper meaning. Klaus had never experienced anything like it, but his body responded, coming to life like a sapling that had finally met the sunlight after a long winter.  
  
Was this what it was like to be worshipped? To be loved? Was this what sex could be like when he joined with someone he truly cared about?  
  
He wanted to analyze it, understand it, like he did everything in his life, but rational thought eluded him every time Eroica’s lips kissed another sensitive spot or his teeth gently bit, not hard enough to break skin but enough to get Klaus’s attention. He never knew the soft place on the inside of his elbow could be an erogenous zone, nor the meaty pad at the base of his thumb. He knew that the spot behind his ear was a trigger point, but no woman had ever made every nerve in his body fire simultaneously when she kissed him there. Even the soft brush of the other man’s hair sliding across his naked skin was a turn-on. He was swimming in sensory ecstasy.  
  
“NATO” was on his lips, he was sure of it, but he swallowed the word as soon as it tried to escape. He kept thinking he would say it; say it when the drawstring of the sweatpants was undone, and the same sure hands that had stripped off his top began to do the same with the bottom, but it never came. It didn’t come when the last of his clothing was removed, and the Earl turned his worship to the scars on his leg, where the surgeons had to put him back together with screws and bone graphs. The man seemed to adore these imperfections too.  
  
He started to say it when the Earl slid down his body and moved his mouth to the dark thatch between his legs, sharp nose buried in the dense, wiry curls, breathing in with a moan that sounded like the man was in pain. He got out the “N,” but it came out as an “Nnnnnnnnnnnnn” when hot lips closed over his heated, erect flesh, and he thought he would die if the thief stopped right then.  
  
And when the Earl put his finger where no man, not even a doctor, had ever put a finger while he was conscious, he thought for sure he would scream it, except that in that moment, the other man touched something deep within him that detonated a bomb inside his head, and he was too busy climaxing to even think of NATO. In the aftermath, he was gasping for breath, shocked and certain that he had just left his body, then the Earl crawled up his body, kissed him, and he tasted himself in the other man’s mouth.  
  
Still dazed from the sheer intensity of his orgasm, he did not protest when the Earl urged him to roll onto his stomach, nor when a pillow was placed under his hips to raise them up a bit. Hands massaged his back, expert and knowledgeable, finding each knot of tension and rubbing it away. Lips again, kissing, licking, laving wet love on the planes of his muscles, on the bullet wound on his left shoulder, on the slash scar on his right hip; slow, worshipful laps as fingers kneaded his flesh like a contented cat.  
  
Yes, he could hear the Earl purring, even if he couldn’t see anything through the curtain of his dark hair, carelessly flipped over his face when the thief nibbled the nape of his neck. He could feel the hot body atop him, sense the slide of naked skin caressing his spine as the other man leaned over him, harsh breath panting in his ear as teeth nipped his earlobe. When had Eroica stripped? He must be losing his touch if he missed the thief undressing. He should say “NATO” and stop the insanity, but he didn’t.  
  
The hard, excited nubs of the Earl’s breasts scraped against the overheated flesh on his back, and his own nipples hardened in response, as well as other parts of him stirring to life again. “NATO!” his rational mind screamed, but his body locked his jaw and wouldn’t let him say it. Eroica kissed his way up and down his spine, dragging fingernails and blunt teeth along each vertebra, scratching him just on the edge of pain. It was pure bliss. Then the man’s strong fingers began kneading his ass, thumbs gently prying apart his cheeks. He tensed and the Earl stopped, only to start again when Klaus relaxed.  
  
Each caress was a question that waited for an answer, and each answer was given in a miniscule tremor of a muscle or the softness of a sigh. Eroica was patient, allowing Klaus to direct the ebb and flow of the tides of pleasure that ran between them, each time bringing the waves in a little further up the beach until he felt the finger at his entrance again.  
  
“Nnnnn,” he moaned, and the Earl froze, waiting, but he only grabbed two fistfuls of the blankets and held on tight.  
  
The finger began making tiny probing circles around the ring of muscle, then slipped in. It was slick and wet with something the Earl had smeared on his hand, and Klaus took a moment to wonder what it was, but his thoughts were soon short circuited when the finger found that spot again. From this angle the finger reached deeper and the pleasure was even more intense. He jerked, hips spasming and pushing his hardness into the pillow, and his voice left him in a harsh cry.  
  
Soft kisses were placed on the small of his back as the finger was withdrawn. He wanted to protest, but he couldn’t form a coherent thought, and then his silent pleas were answered as the finger came back, this time with a friend. Both fingers pushed deep inside him, finding that spot within him that set off fireworks and made him arch his spine and curl his toes, and he gave into it, pushing back with each in-stroke.  
  
Finally, minutes, hours, days later, the fingers were removed, and he felt the Earl shifting on the mattress. There was the telltale sound of a condom wrapper being torn open and he almost laughed. Trust the Earl to have condoms and lube already packed in his bag.  
  
He knew what would come next if he didn’t say the word, but he couldn’t make his mouth speak, then the blunt end of the Earl’s erection pushed against the sphincter, breaching him, and he felt something much larger than two fingers slide into him. Words, profane and obscene, left his lips, but never **_the_** word, not the word that would put a stop to this perversion; he didn’t think he could remember how to say that word.  
  
It took a very long time because the Earl moved so slowly and carefully, each incremental push followed by a period of rest as the silent request for permission to continue was asked and answered by Klaus pushing back. Even once he was fully seated, Eroica still stopped, body held motionless while Klaus adjusted to the invasion, and he waited until Klaus exhaled before he began to move – cautiously at first, then more forcefully when Klaus arched up and offered himself for more.  
  
The pleasure was keen, part rapture, part pain, until the burning sensation faded as his muscles relaxed giving way to bone-rocking ecstasy. After that, his body was not his own as he was claimed and possessed, ridden like a prize racehorse – all fire and untamed strength. He didn’t recognize his own voice as he growled and writhed beneath the Earl, straining with the need to either make the pleasure last or end the torture, until a hand snaked underneath him to grasp his hardness and time firm strokes with each thrust.  
  
It was only a matter of moments before the dual assault had him croaking the Earl’s name as he climaxed again, his vision blacking out and his brain going completely blank. Above him, he heard the thief groan and felt him shudder, giving one last hard shove into him before he fell still as well, panting, forehead pressed to the valley between Klaus’s shoulder blades.  
  
Afterwards, they lay tangled together, breathing heavily and riding out the aftershocks, until the Earl… no… **_Dorian_** slowly disengaged; gentle hands caressing and petting his back and ass in more adoration. Words of praise, of love and devotion, and deep thanks, were whispered between tender kisses as he lay there, unable to move, unable to think beyond the white fire that was still searing his veins.  
  
“Thank you, Major. Thank you, my love,” he heard the other man murmur as fingers stroked his hair, cajoling him until he stopped trembling and returned to his body.  
  
“Nnnnngggguuuhhhhh,” was all he could manage, and the thief chuckled, then left him there naked on the narrow bed.  
  
A few moments later Dorian returned, warm, wet washcloth in hand to wipe him down, and a hand on his hip urged him to roll over so the thief could wash his front. He obliged, still feeling out of body, all of his muscles deeply relaxed, as he watched the other man glide about the room. He expected the man to gloat, to lord his victory over him, but Eroica did not. The man looked triumphant, yes, but it was not a triumph at Klaus’s expense. No, they were both winners here, and he knew it.  
  
He gave Dorian a sated smile which was answered with one of the Earl’s dazzling grins, and he watched as the other man pushed the beds together to give them more room. Then he was gathered up, arms coming around him as the Earl cuddled close, and he found his own reaction to the snuggling odd because he’d never enjoyed it before. In the past, once he was finished having sex, he’d been anxious to get dressed and leave, but this time he welcomed the closeness, the post-coital intimacy, and he even wanted more.  
  
 _‘So this is the afterglow,’_ he mused, tangling his fingers into Dorian’s curls. The feel of the soft hair sliding over his skin brought out a tenderness in him that he hadn’t felt after sex before, a mellow sweetness full of affection and fondness. ‘ _Is this what it means to have a lover? Is Dorian my lover now?’_  
  
“Don’t fall asleep, my love,” the Earl whispered lazily. “We’re not finished yet. We’re just having a little rest before Round Two.”  
  
“Round Two?” he repeated, his voice rough, but his body tingled at the prospect of having more sex.  
  
Dorian nodded and kissed him. “Mmm hmmm. You didn’t think that was all there was going to be? I’ve waited years for this moment, Major. I’m not about to waste a minute of it.”  
  
“Ah,” he answered, scenarios running through his mind.  
  
He wasn’t sure what the Earl had planned for Round Two, but he was noticing some discomfort down there, and he didn’t know how much he would enjoy being taken again. Then again, two hours ago, he would never have believed that he would find pleasure in being taken at all or in having sex with another man, but he could honestly say that it had been the best sex of his life.  
  
He looked at the Earl, taking in the sloe-eyed, contented look on Dorian’s face, and relaxed. His lover was very experienced. He would know what to do, and Klaus knew Dorian would never hurt him. The other man saw him smile softly and smiled back, eyes shining with adoration.  
  
“You can nap if you want, though. I’ll wake you in thirty minutes,” Eroica said kindly, nuzzling him under his chin.  
  
“Okay,” he agreed, wrapping an arm around the other man and allowing the lazy contentment he was feeling to spread throughout his body. It was mixed with an odd possessiveness as the Earl pressed closer, snuggling and sighing happily.  
  
He didn’t actually sleep, more like dozed, until feather-light kisses on his neck and chest roused him. He smiled and chuckled when the Earl’s mouth found his and kissed him deep.  
  
“Has it been thirty minutes already?” he asked, warmth snaking into his belly as Dorian rose up on elbows beside him.  
  
“To the second,” the other man replied, eyes smoldering with heat and promise. “Are you ready for Round Two?”  
  
“Hmmm. What would you do, I wonder, if I said NATO now?” he teased.  
  
Dorian grinned, eyes sparkling, and threw one leg over his hip to straddle him, his hands flat on Klaus’s chest. “I wouldn’t believe you, just like I didn’t believe you when you said it earlier.”  
  
“But that means you broke your word. You promised that if I said it, you’d stop whatever you were doing,” he reminded, but there was no irritation in his voice.  
  
“Yes, but if you recall, I wasn’t doing **_anything_** when you said it,” the thief answered.  
  
Klaus reached up and put his hands on the Earl’s narrow hips. “Is that so? How do you know you weren’t doing anything?”  
  
“Unless you were objecting to me breathing, Major dear, I am innocent.”  
  
He laughed, grinning wolfishly. “You, thief, are no innocent, and you know it.”  
  
It was the wrong thing to say, and he realized it the moment he said the words. The Earl’s face fell and his blue eyes went watery.  
  
“You’re right. I’m not anymore, am I? I’m a killer now.”  
  
“Halt. Enough of that. You know you had no choice. He would have killed both of us,” he argued, unhappy at the Earl’s unwarranted guilt. Besides it was not the type of conversation he wanted to have when he was naked in bed with another naked man sitting on top of him.  
  
“But…”  
  
“You know I am a killer, yes? I have killed many, many times. Do you think less of me for it?” he countered.  
  
“No, of course not! I know you, Major. If you killed, it was because you had to,” Dorian assured him, eyes wide.  
  
“Exactly, and I can tell you, you killed that man because you had to, because he was an evil man who was going to kill me. He was also part of a terrorist organization bent on mayhem and destruction, and he had to be stopped. You didn’t just save me, you saved all of the innocent people that would have been killed,” he stated forcefully.  
  
The little pep talk worked because the Earl’s face lit up and he leered.  
  
“That’s right. I vanquished the enemy, and I got to claim the prize,” Dorian purred, wriggling his backside and grinding his hips to send shocks of pleasure through Klaus’s groin. “I got to tear down your Berlin Wall.”  
  
He watched, waiting, excitement slowly building in anticipation for what was coming next, and he was not disappointed when the Earl bent down, the tip of his tongue tracing the line of Klaus’s throat up to his chin. The feeling was intense, but more… he trusted this man, he knew him, and Dorian knew and accepted him. Dorian had killed for him, and for some reason that knowledge was powerfully attractive.  
  
 _‘Mein Gott, I’m twisted,’_ he thought to himself, but soon pushed the notions aside as the Earl loomed over him.  
  
“I set the watchtowers on fire, and blew the gates off their hinges,” the thief crooned, sex in every syllable. “The bricks and mortar crumbled, and I strode through the rubble, the conquering hero.”  
  
“Shut up and kiss me, you foppish idiot,” he growled, seizing Eroica’s face in his hands and yanking him up for a searing kiss.  
  
“Hmmmmm,” Dorian groaned, grinning. “Who is conquering who now?”  
  
Klaus silenced him with another kiss and Round Two began in earnest.  
  
This time, the Earl reversed their positions, offering himself up for the taking. Klaus was uncertain, but his lover guided him, showing him what to do to make his partner ready. He even put the condom on for him, making a grand gesture out of sliding the thin rubber onto him.  
  
“You don’t want to do this without protection, my love,” the thief’s sultry voice whispered harshly. “Take it from someone who knows, urinary tract infections are the pits.”  
  
He could just imagine, wondering how the Earl knew such things – and who had given him the infection – but then it didn’t matter because he found himself pressing into the hot, tight ( _tight, tight, **tight!**_ ) channel as he struggled not to embarrass himself by climaxing too soon.  
  
Dorian didn’t help him any, facing him on his back, knees bent almost to his chest, body splayed and displayed in wanton lust. He was loud, too, moaning and demanding Klaus ravish him with base, obscene words that drove him wild, and he kept having to cover the Earl’s cries with his mouth lest the other man’s noise disturb the guests in the room next door. The last thing he needed was for hotel security to barge in and find him fucking the Earl of Gloria up the ass.  
  
When he thought he couldn’t stand it anymore, he grabbed hold of his lover’s erection and worked him the way Dorian had worked him during Round One, and the Earl proved to have no more ability to withstand the onslaught as he did. The other man arched, pulling his legs even further up and driving Klaus deeper into him, then he screamed and came violently. The passage around his hardness constricted into a vice, clamping down on him and squeezing the orgasm right out of him as he followed his lover off the cliff.  
  
Klaus collapsed on top of Dorian, shuddering and taking in huge gulps of air, and he wasn’t sure he could feel all of limbs anymore. He stayed that way until a strong hand gave him a pinch, and he turned his attention to his lover.  
  
“I love the feel of your body on mine, Major, but you’re crushing me,” the Earl told him, his voice strained.  
  
“Ach! Sorry,” he apologized, lifting off the other man, tossing the soiled condom into the bedside wastebasket, and coming to rest beside him as the Earl rolled to his side, facing him.  
  
“It’s quite all right. I love the idea that making love with me almost made you black out. Next time we’ll do it like spoons so you can pass out all you want. I’d love to fall asleep still feeling you in me.”  
  
Just the thought of it made his softening member stir, and he smiled hotly. “That sounds nice. Something for Round Three, maybe?”  
  
Dorian reached up to push a sweaty lock of hair off Klaus’s forehead. “Maybe or maybe I’ll do you again, like that, and fall asleep still in you. I could take you again if I’m very careful.”  
  
“Ah… yes. I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he stammered, flushing a bit.  
  
The Earl snickered. “Not in the least. I’m stronger than I look, Major. I can take a lot.”  
  
“I noticed,” he jibed, smiling.  
  
“Oh ho, and Iron Klaus reveals that he has a sense of humor. I always knew you had it in you, my dear. You just needed the right man to bring it out.”  
  
“Well, you certainly are not a woman,” he commented dryly.  
  
The thief flipped his blond curls back over his shoulder, jutted out his noticeably boob-less chest, and preened. “What gave it away?”  
  
“I am an intelligence agent. I am a trained professional in these things.”  
  
Dorian laughed, his mouth stretched into a delighted grin. “Touché! I’ll think twice if I ever want to sneak something by you, Major. Your powers of observation are much too sharp for me.”  
  
“Now it is **_you_** who are showing your sense of humor,” he said, reaching out to snag an unruly curl.  
  
The Earl intercepted his hand and held it, entwining his long fingers into his blunt ones as his face grew serious. He stayed silent as Dorian examined his palm, touched the tips of fingers, paying close attention to his index finger – the one that pulled the trigger on his Magnum, and he knew the thief had returned to brooding about the killing in the office. He wasn’t surprised; such feelings were often cyclical, rounding back on themselves at odd intervals.  
  
“I didn’t want to kill him,” he heard the Earl whisper. “I didn’t go into that office planning on becoming a murderer. I just… I saw you there, handcuffed to that desk, and that man had your gun, and I knew that something terrible must have happened for you to have lost your gun.”  
  
The Earl enfolded Klaus’s hand between both of his own, his blue eyes focusing on the short, self-manicured nails.  
  
“When I saw him raise your gun to shoot… something… snapped in me. I don’t know. It wasn’t any different from any other time your life had been in danger, but when I saw he had the Magnum… I knew. I knew this time it was serious.”  
  
“You didn’t think. You didn’t plan. You just…” he said.  
  
“Did what I had to do,” Dorian finished.  
  
Klaus covered the Earl’s hands with his left one while Dorian still held onto his right, and pulled them to his lips where he kissed the slender knuckles.  
  
“It is a comfort to me to know that, if push came to shove, you could kill for me. I always knew you were capable of it, I just didn’t know if you knew that,” he admitted.  
  
Dorian gasped, tears brimming his eyes, and he lunged forward, throwing his arms around Klaus. “I love you. I love you. I love you. I’d do anything for you, and I guess, after today, I have.”  
  
“Ja,” he admitted, pulling the thief closer. The possessiveness was back, stronger now, and it was mixed with the need to protect his lover, to shield him and soothe his pain.  
  
The kisses that followed tasted of Dorian’s tears and had nothing to do with sex, at least not at first. Each caress and tender touch was an affirmation of life and their connection to each other, and, ultimately, it didn’t matter who did what or who took who, only that they did it together, and that they each found completion in the other.  
  
When Round Three was over, they took a shower together, washing off the sweat and other bodily fluids that were splattered all over them. Once they were clean and dry, Klaus favored Dorian by putting on the gray silk pajamas that had been in the gym bag, and crawled into bed next to a nearly naked Earl of Gloria who was wearing nothing more than a pair of skimpy briefs. Dorian had already brought a glass of wine and a bottle of beer to the bed, and Klaus accepted the beer with thanks, taking a deep swig of it as he lay on the mattress, his back braced against the headboard, and held his lover close, the thief’s head nestled into the crook of his shoulder.  
  
“Lay your sleeping head, my love,  
Human on my faithless arm…” Eroica said softly.  
  
“What is that foppish bullshit?” he commented, taking another swig of beer.  
  
“It isn’t foppish bullshit. It’s W. H. Auden,” Dorian argued, sniffing in offense and taking a drink of his wine.  
  
“So?”  
  
“So, Auden didn’t write foppish bullshit. He wrote poems that reflected the real world. His work is sad and poignant.”  
  
“I’m sure,” he deadpanned. Most poets were useless degenerates, but he didn’t say that.  
  
“I’m serious, Major. Listen…  
  
“Lay your sleeping head, my love,  
Human on my faithless arm;  
Time and fevers burn away  
Individual beauty from  
Thoughtful children, and the grave  
Proves the child ephemeral:  
But in my arms till break of day  
Let the living creature lie,  
Mortal, guilty, but to me  
The entirely beautiful,” Dorian recited, then looked at him expectantly.  
  
He looked back, blinking.  
  
“Well?” the thief prompted.  
  
“Well, what? I have no idea what any of that meant.”  
  
“It means that love – real love – isn’t perfect. It’s messy and complicated, and full of conflict, but it’s also tender and beautiful. The very nature of its imperfection and frailty is what makes it real. It is perfect in its flaws. Like us,” the Earl said, giving Klaus a fond and tender look full of quiet joy.  
  
“Only you would read that much into a foppish poem,” he groused, but smiled inwardly at the simple happiness in his lover’s eyes. It made him happy, too.  
  
“Well, I didn’t recite the whole thing. There’s more to it than that, and I’m not the only one who interprets Auden’s work in that way,” the Earl countered, sipping his wine.  
  
“I’ll bet they’re all idiot fops like you,” he teased, not really serious, but enjoying the comfortable banter.  
  
“Oh, you are hopeless,” Dorian chided with mock-disgust.  
  
“Ja. Does that bother you?”  
  
The thief snickered. “Not at all. I love a good challenge,” he said, a secret smile on his lips as he drank more of his wine.  
  
Klaus snorted and finished the beer. “We should get some sleep. We have to leave early for Bonn.”  
  
“How early?” the Earl asked suspiciously.  
  
Klaus reached over to the hotel-provided alarm clock and pressed a button to display the time he’d preset for the alarm to go off. “6:00am.”  
  
“6:00am! But Major, it’s after two!”  
  
“So? Three hours is enough sleep,” he countered.  
  
“Maybe for you, Major, but I need my beauty rest,” Dorian complained, then he sighed dramatically. “But I suppose I’ve spent enough sleepless nights pining over you; I can survive only getting three hours as long as those hours are spent in your arms.”  
  
“Idiot,” he replied, but he pulled the Earl closer as he turned out the light and settled them both down in the bed.  
  
They were positioned at an angle across the mattresses so that neither of them would get caught in the crease between the two beds, and Dorian rolled to press against his side, head tucked under his chin, one hand resting on his chest. Klaus could tell that the earlier stress of the day, and all the energy that they’d expended having sex, was finally catching up to them. He knew he was certainly feeling it, and he allowed himself to relax and begin to drift off.  
  
“I’d do it again, you know. In a heartbeat,” his lover whispered, and Klaus knew he was referring to the killing.  
  
“I know,” he answered, cracking open one eye to peer into the dark room.  
  
“I love you, Major.”  
  
“Klaus,” he corrected; here in the dark, he could be himself and not what the rest of the world wanted him to be.  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“You never call me Klaus.”  
  
The Earl was silent for a moment, then he said, “I didn’t think I was allowed to call you Klaus, Maj… ah… Klaus.”  
  
“We have just spent the last few hours… being intimate. I have called you Dorian. You can call me Klaus,” he answered, managing to keep his voice steady.  
  
“You mean, when we are alone… like this?” the Earl asked hopefully.  
  
“Ja.”  
  
He could feel the joy coming off his lover in waves, but all the thief did was snuggle even closer. “I think I would like that.”  
  
“I think I would, too.”  
  
Dorian sighed and fisted one hand loosely into the front of Klaus’s pajama top, his body relaxing, and his warm scent was wafting into Klaus’s nose, lulling him with its familiar comfort. It seemed his lover’s post-coital, freshly washed smell was a more effective sleep-aid than any children’s lullaby.  
  
“I love you, Klaus.”  
  
“I know,” he replied softly.  
  
“One day… one day you’ll love me, too,” he heard the Earl murmur.  
  
“Go to sleep,” he ordered gently.  
  
“Yes, Sir, NATO man, Sir,” Dorian mumbled, but Klaus could tell he was already falling asleep.  
  
“Idiot.”  
  
“Mmm hmm, but yours,” his lover answered, then Klaus felt him drop off to sleep.  
  
Klaus knew he wasn’t far behind, but he needed to shut off his spinning brain first. There was a little voice inside his head that was screaming, “Mine! Mine! Mine!” as his hands tightened on the sleeping Earl, and the emotions that filled him in the darkness were not ones he usually felt in daylight.  
  
There had been few times in his life where he could say he’d been truly happy, and those times had never lasted. There had always been something that pushed in to take it away, or someone – usually his superior or his father. His brief moments of contentment, when he could be Klaus, had been fleeting, and they had gotten more and more infrequent the older he became. He’d all but given up on the childish notion that he could be happy in life, but the last few hours had proven to him that maybe there was still some hope left in him yet.  
  
Maybe there was some truth to this love thing. Maybe it was there in the bed with them. Maybe it was what he was feeling now – this warm contentment and fierce possessiveness, this unfamiliar joy and lightness to his normally dark moods. He wanted it; he wanted to be loved. The question was how long would it last and what would he be willing to do to keep it? Even more pressing was what would the Earl require of him in order for him to remain Klaus’s lover?  
  
He couldn’t imagine that Dorian would ask more of him than he could give. After chasing after him for so long, the thief had to know his limitations. Even if homosexual relationships were no longer illegal, and gays were allowed to serve in the German military, there were still reports of discrimination and prejudice. Not that he thought anyone would dare to try anything against him, Iron Klaus, but it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility – if the person doing it was completely suicidal.  
  
Plus he had his father to think of, and he knew the old man would not be happy to find out that his only son and heir had taken a male lover. He shied away from saying he was gay. In truth, he didn’t know if he was gay. He knew Dorian made him happy. He knew Dorian had given him the best night of sex in his life, and he knew Dorian was the one he wanted, but if that made him gay – he wasn’t convinced. He wasn’t attracted to other men, and he knew he still appreciated the female form – as long as the woman managed to keep her mouth shut. Maybe it wasn’t so much his sexual orientation as it was who was brave enough to keep after him until he gave in. Dorian was the only one who had simply never given up.  
  
He also trusted the Earl. For all his moral compass was skewed at times, they were both honorable men, and they understood each other. He had allowed the thief to see and share parts of his life that not even his most trusted agents had witnessed, and now he knew that Dorian was not only capable of ogling his ass, but protecting it too. Remembering his first view of the Earl standing there with the bloody knife in his hand, he felt a powerful wave of desire, and if it wasn’t necessary for him to get some rest so he could be debriefed in Bonn, he might have awakened his lover for Round Four.  
  
 _‘Hmmm, maybe tomorrow night or the weekend…’_ he mused, planning a secret liaison with his lover.  
  
It would be easy enough to slip away for a night to meet Dorian in Calais or Brussels, unless he was assigned a new mission, and had to leave right away, then he didn’t know when he would see Dorian next. But even so, arranging a meet-up would be as easy as a phone call or e-mail, so long as the mission permitted him the time. He would never compromise a mission or shirk his duty, but he was certain Dorian knew and accepted that.  
  
It was an open secret that Eroica followed him everywhere, so his presence would hardly be a surprise if he showed up in the same location, and he had lost count of the number of times the thief’s skills had come in handy. No one would bat an eye if they were seen together, so nothing need change except that when the thief slipped into his hotel room at night, he would be welcomed. And the cloak and dagger aspect to their trysts might be… exciting; the clandestine meetings, the risk of discovery, maybe the illusion of force…  
  
He couldn’t deny that Dorian jumping him and pinning him to the mattress had been a serious turn-on. Maybe the thief was right in suggesting that he wanted someone to take control and prove he was strong enough to handle the Iron Major. How did an idiot fop know him so much better than he knew himself? Some intelligence agent he was if he’d missed what had been so obvious to the irritating thief, but maybe he’d only been obvious to the one who was willing to look the deepest.  
  
Closing his eyes, he tried to imagine what his next mission would be like, especially if Eroica was involved. He trusted Dorian to behave himself when things were vitally important, but all bets were off for the rest of it. In fact, he could almost guarantee that Dorian would get up to his usual antics just to tease him. Eroica loved nothing more than to be chased by the object of his desire, so he had no reason to believe that the fop would stop now that Iron Klaus had been “caught.” He had a feeling their future “chases” would end very differently from their past ones, at least they’d end much more pleasurably. He wouldn’t put it past the thief to steal something from him, and then stash it somewhere on his body so Klaus would have to frisk and strip him to find it. _  
  
_Come to think of it, that had… possibilities.  
 _  
‘Ach, what am I getting myself into? Tangling with this wiry, unpredictable, infuriating thief?’_ he bemoaned, shaking his head.  
  
Beside him the object of his consternation slept, curled around him, one leg tossed over his calf, one arm draped across his chest, blond hair cascading all around his head. He slipped one finger into the nearest curl, twining the golden strands around his knuckle, and feeling its softness once again. The thief mumbled something and cuddled closer, blissfully unaware of his bedmate’s internal struggles.  
  
 _‘Lay your sleeping head, my love…’_ he remembered, affection blossoming in his chest.  
  
No, their love affair would not be easy or perfect. It would be complicated and exciting and full of conflict, but maybe it was exactly what they both needed, maybe it would be perfect for two imperfect men such as themselves.  
  
FIN  
  
  
Lay your sleeping head, my love,  
Human on my faithless arm;  
Time and fevers burn away  
Individual beauty from  
Thoughtful children, and the grave  
Proves the child ephemeral:  
But in my arms till break of day  
Let the living creature lie,  
Mortal, guilty, but to me  
The entirely beautiful.  
  
 Soul and body have no bounds:  
To lovers as they lie upon  
Her tolerant enchanted slope  
In their ordinary swoon,  
Grave the vision Venus sends  
Of supernatural sympathy,  
Universal love and hope;  
While an abstract insight wakes  
Among the glaciers and the rocks  
The hermit's sensual ecstasy.  
  
 Certainty, fidelity  
On the stroke of midnight pass  
Like vibrations of a bell,  
And fashionable madmen raise  
Their pedantic boring cry:  
Every farthing of the cost,  
All the dreadful cards foretell,  
Shall be paid, but not from this night  
Not a whisper, not a thought,  
Not a kiss nor look be lost.  
  
 Beauty, midnight, vision dies:  
Let the winds of dawn that blow  
Softly round your dreaming head  
Such a day of sweetness show  
Eye and knocking heart may bless.  
Find the mortal world enough;  
Noons of dryness see you fed  
By the involuntary powers,  
Nights of insult let you pass  
Watched by every human love.  
          W.H. Auden


End file.
